Avner Biron

Israeli conductor and flute player/teacher. Avner Biron has been the music director and permanent conductor of the Israel Camerata since it founding. Since 1995 he is also the head of the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance. At the age of 17, Avner Biron won first prize in a national flute competition. He went on to study with Dr. Uri Toeplitz at the Tel-Aviv Rubin Academy and then in England. He played with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and later became first flutist and soloist of the Israel Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Biron studied conducting at the Vienna Academy of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He founded the Galilee Soloists Ensemble, with whom he toured the US and Canada, and also directed the "Music and Nature" Festival in the Galilee and the Liturgical Festival in Abu-Ghosh, near Jerusalem. In the early 1980's he founded a chamber orchestra in Rehovot, which, under his baton, turned into one of Israel's leading orchestras and became the Israel Camerata, Jerusalem in 1996.